JF: Dancing With Braced Ankles

Dancing with Braced Ankles

Brittany Born, Loyola's star libero, balances her passion and the simple life

Ed. Note: Hey guys, I know most of you have met Britt before but I thought I'd share this with you before we all left for New Zealand together. I wrote this piece as an assignment for my Sports Writing class so it is a bit dated but I feel like it's an adequate description of her persona. I know it's a bit long but please take the time to enjoy it.

BALTIMORE - Before last Sunday's match against St. Peter's, Brittany Born meets trainer Steve Austin in his office to be treated. Austin places pads on her back, two on her upper back and two on her lower, and channels electric currents into her muscles.

She does this before every match.

The process takes 15 minutes and makes her quiver, but she claims it is painless. It stimulates her sore back muscles and allows her to bow with the grace necessary for the libero (pronounced LEE-beh-ro) position. After some icing, she is ready for warm-ups.

The rest of the team wears their home blacks but not her. As libero, Born, 20, is designated a lime green jersey that makes her more noticeable to the officials - and everyone else. By now, she is used to standing out.

Jogging lightly, Born ducks her head under the net and bounces up on the other side, swinging her arms like a willow in a windstorm as the rest of the team warms up. The song playing on the loudspeaker is House of Pain's "Jump Around" - her favorite. Born mouths the lyrics along, swiveling her hips to the beat as she fields serves to assistant coach Rich Zwolinski. He does his best to shake off a smile.

After the balls are shagged and the game is ready to begin, she stands off to the side of the net, beams bright and darts towards freshman middle blocker Taylor Koncelik. The two meet mid-jump, Born delivers an enthusiastic two-handed high five and lands soundly on her braced ankles. Electrified, she lets out a fervent cheer to rally her teammates for the upcoming contest.

"I live for game day," Born said, with a thin-lipped, knowing smile, "it's so exciting."

What you wouldn't assume is that this game is the last in a disappointing season that began with four straight losses and ended with the NCAA tournament still out of reach. You wouldn't assume that their opponent was a struggling St. Peter's squad who had also buried the hopes of a playoff berth, coming into the match with a lowly 8-21 record.

You wouldn't stop to think that this was Born's last time donning her ankle braces and lime green jersey before she skips the spring season to study abroad in New Zealand.

Brittany born is this enthusiastic every game - and she hasn't missed one of the 362 sets Loyola has played since she arrived three seasons ago.

"I calculated it and, during the season, it's a full-time job," Born admits, almost guiltily.

At times, the commitments of Division I college volleyball makes her feel restricted, tied down. However, she does not let this affect her. She maintains her constant enthusiasm - for the sake of the team.

"[I try to] be loud, you know, celebrate every point," she explains, "every game matters...nobody likes to lose."

"You'd go nuts if you had six of her," Loyola coach Scott Pennewill jests, "but she's got the ability to get people fired up."

Senior Kimi Gabriel subs in for Born during much of the match, but Born continues to cheer from the sidelines, never completely removing herself from the action. The Hounds dig deep to overcome a late rally by St. Peter's and finish off the Peahens in five sets.

Then, it's over.

The team wraps up another disappointing year, finishing 15-18.

Following the match, they hold a banquet to honor the seniors who won't be returning to Loyola for the coming season. The next day, Pennewill gets busy courting five new recruits signed on for next year and the team takes some much needed time off.

For now, the 20-hours of weekly practice and the early morning workouts are through.

"It hasn't even hit me yet that we don't have volleyball."

Brittany Born sits in her bed across from me, legs folded Indian style, and hugs a pillow in her lap. She dressed in sweatpants and a tank top, the outfit of a girl reviling leisure. no make-up, it's not worth the effort today. Her crimped silk hair falls easy on her shoulders.

She is taking her time, letting her weak ankles rest, and enjoying the good life

JF: "In Which I am Goddamn Terribly Disappointed" or "In Which I Steer Dangerously Close to Making a Point"

Ed Note - Jerard Fagerberg is by no means a political expert nor does he represent the overarching or general political views of TSTLN. He is merely a middle-class liberal-minded college student cliche with stereotypical optimism that unsupported by substantial knowledge of political strategy or general knowledge about the ways of the world. He does, however, have the head turning outrage you typically entrust to the talking heads on NBC so we openly publish his opinion regardless.

Today has been an ugly day for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those of you who don't know, today Scott Brown (a republican) was selected (by the people) to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant senate seat. Though Brown will be up for reelection in November during the midterm elections, his victory is seen as a setback in Kennedy's lifelong campaign for universal health care.

Kennedy, who sat for Massachusetts in the senate for an astounding 46 years, was a stalwart liberal who championed the cause of social medicine. It was his life's work. His recent death has been surrounded by an ongoing debate over health care reform. The Obama administration -which the right has been quick to name "a bunch of fuckstick Communists who want to give Mexicans free hospital visits and, in general, all our fuckin' money, goddamnit" - supports a socialized medicine system (not exactly social medicine, per se, just something akin to it) and needed District Attorney Martha Coakley to gain a strategic majority in the Senate. With Coakley's concession to Brown tonight, Senator Kennedy's dream has suffered a terrible loss.

As a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, I've been weaned on this theory. Specifically, the theory that all people have value and, therefore, should not be punished for being in a lower tax bracket. I will not apologize for this Northeast liberal bias, it's simply who I am. I am not a Communist, though I believe Marx had good intentions. I am not even a Democrat, I'm a registered independent who is fed up withe the change-fearing old boys club the Republican party has become. Simply, universal health care is the most perfect answer right now. No, it is not perfect but it is a start. There must be great reform in the illegal alien debate before a permanent system can be instilled.

We were supposed to be the generation that called for change. The one that was pushing politics to evolve with grace instead of piloting a country of bankers with their heads in the sand. We elected Obama because we thought the light was gonna shine. There was supposed to be progress. Were we all just optimism-prone freethinkers with no respect for the real world?

Maybe the media is getting to us (yeah, that's right, the liberal media and it's left-wing agenda). Newspapers and 11 o'clock programs are telling us nothing is changing, that Obama was all campaign promises and now it's coming back to haunt us. Republicans are calling "Hope" a pipe dream and Democrats are jumping to the GOP just a year and a half into the turnaround. Now, in the shadow of a slowly rising economy and a debate leaning towards progress in the health sector, the change generation - the NOW generation - is losing their battle for rebirth.

We gave in to political shitflinging. Sitting in front of the television yesterday, I watched Coakley and Brown trade insults via campaign ads for hours on end. It was a goddamn onslaught of misleading fact skews and slanted language. Coakley, who once built her campaign around he past accomplishments and ability to progress, had reverted to labeling Brown a Bush sympathizer who was out to sabotage the Obama agenda.

This is not the strategy that birthed America's first black president. This was a cowardly decision that put us into the passenger seat of a car stuck in reverse. By giving the seat of the great Ted Kennedy (say what you will about the man's personal life) over to the Republicans, the change we so willfully elected to see will have to wait, to build and hopefully not die, until we can agree on a system that best benefits the States.

JF: Hopefully Leading Somewhere - Two Poems

Hey folks,
Welcome to the Stairs that Lead Nowhere. My name is Jerry Fagerberg and it's my distinct pleasure to be posting some poetry here on the blog to share with y'all.

Without further ado, here's a sonnet I wrote:

A Tug on the Line
Soon he’ll be still. He’ll quit slapping and flailing
and lay flat on the deck in tired defeat.
No more sideways dance, no more twisting of tail.
As soon as his gills stop grinning to breathe,
I’ll sloppily open a seam in his side,
disregarding the lipless gasp that escapes
and the sudden perk of his fins as my blade glides
coarsely through muscle and scales. I’ll scrape
and pluck the oily tubes in his belly and try to ignore
the weight of his eye – that marble, all veneration and trust,
that was blind to the hooks in the water before.
Now, blind to my guilt, my rigid disgust,
he’ll curse my hands in wordless speech:
You son-of-a-bitch, you tricked me

And, in the spirit of the recent blizzard I give you:

New England Winters
Every winter, the farmers flooded the bogs.
None of us knew why, but when the early-morning frost
made the water a mirror thick enough to
skate on, the mystery was lost.

Dad told the story of a boy who’d
slid ‘cross the Charles in a Styrofoam cooler back when
he was a kid. There was a a creak – forboding – and the ice opened
like jaws full of black water and swallowed the boy
before he made it to the other bank.
A fisherman found his mittens that spring.

But there was no caution in us. With every press of
a skate, we dared the bogs to open, to pull
us down to where the cranberries lay
dormant and purple, and make fables of us too.

And our challenge was met with no more
than scraped palms and knee bruises.

Hope you enjoyed! I'll be posting lots more.

Stay warm,
Jerry